Date:October 19, 2009 (Mon.) 16：00～18：00
Venue: Meeting Room, the 3rd floor, Inamori Foundation Memorial Hall
Presentation：
MINE, Yoichi (Associate Professor, Global Colloboration Cenber, Osaka Unveresity ）
Commentator：
SATO, Takahiro (G-COE reseacher, Kyoto Unviersity)
WADA, Taizo (G-COE reseacher, Kyoto Unviersity)
UBUKATA, Fumikazu (Associate Professor, Okayama University)
Title:Human Security and Development – Is it possible to index international standards?
【Record of Activity】
Associate Professor Yoichi Mine, the reporter, provided a full account of the concept of human development, which has become established as an international standard over the past two or three decades, and human security, which has gained importance as a new international standard in recent years. He outlined the background underlying their evolution, their principles and interpretations, as well as the possibilities for creating indices and the challenges involved. His presentation provided many suggestions for the Sustainable Humanosphere and Sustainable Humanosphere Index that we have aimed to create in this program.
Human rights, human development and human security are all international standards that have been formulated in the setting of the United Nations and been developed over the past two or three decades, and at the same time concepts with strong political implications. Human development is a concept developed based on economist Amartya Sen’s capability approach in the light of people’s criticisms toward various social problems (unemployment, the gap between the rich and the poor, problems of medical insurance, etc.) arising from economic development under the initiative of the World Bank and IMF and based on people’s expectations for a more “humane” development. While the Human Development Index, which was developed as a tool for evaluating human development, is sometimes criticized as being an oversimplification of the issues involved, it has significance as an effective counterweight to those who focus solely on economic growth, as it makes changes to conventional economic indicators (i.e. per capita GDP), which value economic development alone, by adding factors related to livelihood and education to the economic indicator. Human security is a new concept that prioritizes the protection of each individual from various risks and fears (poverty, infectious diseases, disasters, conflicts, etc.) under the circumstances following the end of Cold War and in the midst of ongoing globalization. It differs from the conventional notion of national security, which focuses on the military and public security of nations. While human development takes as its idea an ever-rising progressive development path, human security has a saw-tooth appearance, as it presumes temporary setbacks caused by threats. For this reason, in human security, the crucial tasks are seen as taking early preventive measures and watching for both persistent threats and sudden risks, as well as weathering damages caused by downside risks (hazards of sudden crises). Regarding the core area to be protected under human security, the report co-authored by Ogata and Sen presented areas such as subsistence, living and dignity, though the report did not recognize differences among individuals, regions, and values and failed to specify more concrete factors. Regarding the indexation of human security, issues raised included how to categorize main constituents, the purpose of the indexation, and problems of regionality and commonality. Following Associate Prof. Mine’s presentation, Dr. Taizo Wada, the commentator, pointed out that the nature of human security differs depending upon the ages of individuals and the surrounding socio-economic conditions, and he discussed how informal care (nursing care supported by family members and local communities) and informal safety nets, which were important for individuals in developing countries, could be reflected in human security. Dr. Takahiro Sato explained various attempts at indexations for the humanosphere index and asked a question about the relation between human security and “sustainability” and between the “vital core” and the humanosphere. Associate Prof. Fumikazu Ubukata commented on the possibility of focusing on risks concerning the interface between human development/human security and humanosphere. In reply to those questions, the reporter mentioned the necessity of taking socio-economic conditions into account in order to approximate reality more closely with the index, the importance of informal areas and difficulties in indexing qualitative matters, the necessity to introduce physical assessment criteria, possibilities for categorization other than the nation, and differences in time scale such that the reporter assumes a zero-sum situation for human security and conceives a much longer time span for the humanosphere. Also, many questions and comments were raised from the floor and fruitful arguments were conducted from many fields on the possibility of adopting a typological approach instead of indexation, the necessity to pay attention to the reproduction of human beings and to the intimate sphere, and the relationship between the new concepts and practices.
(Xiaogang Sun )